Why Not Tell Us How You REALLY Feel About It?

WYSIWYG (Republic)

Chumbawumba

By Victoria Moon

The Top Ten Warning Signs Of A Very Bad Album:

10. The written explanations of the songs are much longer than the actual lyrics to the songs.

9. The written explanations of the songs are trite rehashings of political beliefs and spend more time trying to be clever than finding solutions.

8. You actually need written explanations of your songs—a sure sign your art doesn't even come close to standing on its own.

7. The songs reflect a paradoxical obsession with pop culture while simultaneously dissing it in an annoyingly superior way.

6. While dissing all pop culture and pop music have to offer, every song is a microcosm of every rehashed trick in the dance music book, sort of a historical sampler of pop music that adds nothing to the dance, pop, industrial, hip-hop, folk and rock genres it rips off. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it ain't workin' here, folks.

5. Your album is 22 songs long. Yup. Twenty-two. That is (sadly) not a typo. Quantity is NEVER a replacement for quality in the pop music world.

4. One of your cynically deeper lyrics on an album you tout as cynically deep is "I got a plastic toy with my Happy Meal." I am not making that up.

3. There's a huge color photo of two dogs copulating as your album art, giving the listener the odd images of two copulating dogs nodding to the dance beat as they sing, "I'm just scraping the social dogma from the bottom of my soul."

2. The band's "cooler-than-you" pomposity tends to make its listeners about as sympathetic as Rush Limbaugh at Woodstock and much less patient. By the time the lyrics "stupid/stupid/stupid" are chanted, you agree wholeheartedly.

And the number one warning sign of a Very Bad Album:

1. Your one-hit wonder was a maniacally chanted celebratory anthem for drunks drinking too much and vomiting.

On a positive note, though, it makes a great drink coaster, but turn the copulating dogs side-down before your parents drop by.